“Listen, Ned. Use your good sense. Say I was in a place where I couldn’t get away, and you could. Suppose we became separated somehow on the ice, and he should be overtaking me, but you’d have a good chance to go to safety. Oh, you would go on, wouldn’t you?” Her tone was one of infinite pleading. “Would there be any use of your returning—and getting killed yourself—when you couldn’t possibly save me? Don’t you see the thing to do would be to keep on—with the hope of coming out at last—and then getting up an expedition to rescue me? Promise me you won’t destroy what little hope we have by doing such a foolish thing as that——”
Wondering, mystified by her earnestness, half inclined to believe that she was at the verge of delirium from cold and exertion, his arms tightened about her and he gave her his promise so that she might rest. “Of course I’ll do the wise thing,” he told her. “The only thing!”
Her strong little arms responded to the embrace, and slowly, joyously she drew his face toward hers. “Then kiss me, Ned,” she told him, soberly yet happily, as a child might beg a kiss at bedtime. Her love for him welled in her heart. “I want you to kiss me good night.”
Slowly, with all the tenderness of his noble manhood, he pressed his lips to hers. “Good night, Bess,” he told her simply. For an instant, night and cold and danger were forgotten. “Good night, little girl.”
Their lips met again, but now they did not fall away so that he could speak. There was no need for words. His arm about her held her lips to his, and thus they lay, forgetting the wastes of ice about them, for the moment secure from the cruel forces that had hounded them so long. The wind swept by unheard. The fine snow drifted before it, as if it meant to cover them and never yield them up again. The dimmer stars faded and vanished into the recesses of the sky.
The cold’s scourge was impotent now. The hour was like some dream of childhood: calm, wondrous, ineffably sweet. The ghost of happiness seemed no longer just a shadow. For the moment Bess’s fancy believed it real.
Sleep drifted over Ned. Still with her lips on his, Bess listened till his slow, quiet breathing told her that he was no longer conscious. She waited an instant more, her arms trembling as she pressed him close as she could.
“I love you, Ned,” she whispered. “Whatever I do—it’s all for love of you.”
Then, very softly so as not to waken him, she slipped out of his embrace and got to her feet. She started away straight north,—at right angles to the direction that they had gone before.